So, what's the current status of everything?

[λ the β-Redex Reducer]

Hey folks.. Did I read that pre-orders will be shipped before Christmas? 2019? I was going to buy a switch but might hold off on that now.

Not regular pre-orders, but proto-type pre-orders. Supposedly pre-orders are coming next year. Or at least that is how I understand it.

 

[quartercast]

I see.. Prototypes refers to those who spend $1-2k on the small batch of initial prototypes?

 

[ible]

@quartercast correct.

 

[Akko]

Nah, at least I want to reread the Terry Prattschet Books in English

You definitely should! While the translators have done a great job on the discworld books, the English originals contain so much wordplay that's just impossible to translate.

 

[ICELORD]

As the wait is long since the beginning of the Pyra project, I am a restless person and I create my own portable consoles, using materials created by other companies and standard use electronics.
I wanted you to see my last video, without any desire to profit me since this project of mine is not sold.
Well, enjoy enjoying my music and my console while we wait for our Pyra

 

[matzesu]

Looks cool, have lots of fun whit it,

How good is the Batterielife, and how long dit it take to build??

I suppose you took a WIIU Gamepad, and put a RaPI in and some custom Batterie Board..

Ditnt have a WIIU, as i was a long time Handheld Gamer Only, until i bought a XBOX ONEX some Yeahr ago, on a whim..

 

[ICELORD]

Looks cool, have lots of fun whit it,

How good is the Batterielife, and how long dit it take to build??

I suppose you took a WIIU Gamepad, and put a RaPI in and some custom Batterie Board..

Ditnt have a WIIU, as i was a long time Handheld Gamer Only, until i bought a XBOX ONEX some Yeahr ago, on a whim..

The battery lasts 3 hours and 30 minutes in intensive play. I started the project 5 months ago, everything takes a long time when you order the parts from aliexpr ... and the software was already finished before

 

[spud42]

nice job. rasp pi 3+ i see was going to ask but i actually waited till the end this time and even though i cant read most of the end credit raspberry 3B+ is a give away..lol
3hours and 30 minutes from a 6000mAH battery not too bad.. not the original screen? and no touch ?

 

[ICELORD]

nice job. rasp pi 3+ i see was going to ask but i actually waited till the end this time and even though i cant read most of the end credit raspberry 3B+ is a give away..lol
3hours and 30 minutes from a 6000mAH battery not too bad.. not the original screen? and no touch ?

I use another screen in the project, because the original is not compatible with raspberry, it is not touch like the original, but the screen I use has more brightness

 

[spud42]

i bought some arcade buttons and joysticks. i am going to build my 3 B+ into a coffee table . just got a HDMI to VGA cable fro ebay then 2 days after it got here i found one in a junk drawer..lol
i have a 17 or 19"4:3 VGA screen i am going to build into the top of the coffee table.

 

[ICELORD]

i bought some arcade buttons and joysticks. i am going to build my 3 B+ into a coffee table . just got a HDMI to VGA cable fro ebay then 2 days after it got here i found one in a junk drawer..lol
i have a 17 or 19"4:3 VGA screen i am going to build into the top of the coffee table.

how good! look at this previous project, it is a mini arcade machine

 

[oskda]

Our current calendar system is botched with:

- Silly months that have variable length and are apparently 2 months behind (SEPTember is 9th, OCTOber is 10th, NOVember is 11th, and DECember is 12th)

Roma ruled western world for centuries and Greek+Roman culture is western base culture (of course some countries were earlier and more romanized than others, even some of them speak languages descending directly from vulgar Latin or have law system descending from Roman law), so our calendar is that for historical reasons.

A year sometimes has 365 days, and other times 366 (really the number of days in a year isn't integer), so it is impossible to apply the same days for all months. 365 is not a very divisible number: 5x73 (nor 366 with one more factor: 2 x 3 x 61).

Other cultures use lunar calendar, which can be a bit more perfect in some sense, but it has same problem: a month is near 30 days, but not exactly 30, as it has 29,53 days. Sincerely I think solar calendar has more sense for us: winter, summer, hot, cold, holidays...

- A year count that was apparently made by someone who thinks that 0 is not a number and that 1-1 is -1

- Some weeks that are not even properly contained in our months and instead overlap with 2 different months.

To top that off, base 10 is generally inferior to base 12.

My friend, 0 or ZERO, as a true number (not only as a sign inside a number) is a posterior concept. Greek and Romans didn't have that concept (nor negatives as numbers). Interesting is to know Greek used rational numbers (positive rational numbers without 0) and these are more complex than integer numbers (integers include 0 and negatives as a concept), and they knew existence of irrational numbers (they had a very advanced geometry too, in fact it remainded the same for lot of centuries afther them).

0, as a whole number, and decimal-based place value notation originated in old India and only came to Europe via Al-Andalus (muslin Spain) in the 11th century. So, it is was too much late for Romans and our calendar.

Of course base 12 is better, and even base 16 is better, but I suppose we use 10 base because we got 10 fingers in our hands. If we would have 12 or 16 fingers, surely we would use 12 or 16 base.

As you know, we use hexadecimal base in computing, but only because it is a compact binary form (4 bits fit in a hex digit). And we don't have numbers/names for 11th-15th digits (we reuse letters A-F in that way).

Post automatically merged: Dec 9, 2019

I think that I once heard that the year was considered to start with spring because that is when life starts to grow but was then changed to be more sun-centric and thus start at a time shortly after the winter equinox. I have no idea if that's true though.

Equinox are in March and September. Equinox is where time and day are the same length.

Solstice are in December and June. Solstice is where time is longer and shorter. For us it has sense because from that date days are longer or shorter, so it would be a good starting point fro a year (December solstice is about 21-22th). The problem is that north and south hemispheres are inverted and Earth has considerable axial tilt, so, as you know, length of days and seasons are inverted in both hemispheres.

Not having the year 0 is silly too because it's an extra exception to our system and thus an extra chance for people to make mistakes with it.

Really don't bother too much: I don't know if we know exactly where was year 1. It is when Christ was born, but we don't know it exactly, I think (even we don't know exact date). And much worse, our calendar have been reformed and modificatifies (add and/or take days/etc) a lot of times, so if you try to operate with dates along too much centuries, you will get wrong or, worse, you will go crazy

 

[oskda]

But the Keyboard Light of ATCs Notebook is much more impressive than the Light on his Pyra..
I think our non transparent Pyras should work better whit the Backlight..

I hate all modern notebooks chiclet keyboard backlight as light escapes from under the keys borders and it becomes really annoying: in some angles you can receive light directly from LEDs.

The problem is that today they want to do keyboard as thin as they can, so there is little border under keys, so light escapes. If keys had much larger border, inserting much more deeply inside computer, you never would get disturbed, but it implies like 2 more mm in thickness and it seems that is a big sin today :O

I think we won't have that problem in Pyra, as it is not a notebook keyboard and it uses a full coated rubber base.

You can see that bright LEDs in keys bordes in this post picture (others are much worse):

What is that??

A much worse notebook example:

 

[oskda]

You definitely should! .... the English originals contain so much wordplay that's just impossible to translate.

The problem is that if you are not English native or you are without enough deep knowledge/use, it may be you don't see/appreciate/enjoy that English wordplay. Humorous/ironic/etc text can be more difficult to understand than normal content.

 

[λ the β-Redex Reducer]

A year sometimes has 365 days, and other times 366 (really the number of days in a year isn't integer), so it is impossible to apply the same days for all months.

It is possible but some days will just have to fall outside of the regular months. It's not perfect but perfect is impossible and it's much better than having months of random duration like the Gregorian calendar has because every month is equal and the "year day" and "leap day" can just be made holidays. Also, with equal months weeks can properly fit into months. E.g. every month could start on a Monday and end on a a Sunday. It would also make bookkeeping easier.

Equinox are in March and September. Equinox is where time and day are the same length.

Solstice are in December and June. Solstice is where time is longer and shorter.

My bad. I thought that I had typed "solstice" there. I was being careless and accidentally mixed up words.

 

[oskda]

It is possible but some days will just have to fall outside of the regular months. It's not perfect but perfect is impossible and it's much better than having months of random duration like the Gregorian calendar has because every month is equal and the "year day" and "leap day" can just be made holidays. Also, with equal months weeks can properly fit into months. E.g. every month could start on a Monday and end on a a Sunday. It would also make bookkeeping easier.

International Fixed Calendar is really nice, but it has no chances (it has even less than constructed languages for international use).

Really it is very easy to understand/remember actual calendar format, so there is no need to change it. Even, if you change it. it would be really crazy ans costly: when you use it you must have all modified. Have you though all code would need to be changed? Plus code you can't change?

For example, my venerable HP-48 series calculators have clock/calendar and date functions, and I would lost it (Just joking, but I love that machine, and I use actually).

A constructed international auxiliary language (like Lojban) can be introduced as one more language: you don't need to speak it that day, and if pushed it would get more and more int' use over time (at some time it could be studied like 2nd language in schools), even some people won't be interested in international language (they don't need it as they don't need to communicate internationally). And that have near zero chances. Int' fixed calendar has less chances of being adopted, but much higher cost than int' aux language, while you gain too little with calendar change.

With Lojban we would gain a lot of: regular but powerful int language, clear rules, exact pronunciation, regulated, neutral and equal for all (no one is native speaker on it). We'd gain much more than with new regular calendar, but it has no chances.

 

[λ the β-Redex Reducer]

With Lojban we would gain a lot of: regular but powerful int language, clear rules, exact pronunciation, regulated, neutral and equal for all (no one is native speaker on it).

I wonder if that would work or if the language would just (d)evolve like all natural languages do with slang and such causing the language to lose it's advantages.

 

[Akko]

The problem is that if you are not English native or you are without enough deep knowledge/use, it may be you don't see/appreciate/enjoy that English wordplay. Humorous/ironic/etc text can be more difficult to understand than normal content.

You have a point there, but on the other hand: How else would you learn to understand those finesses of the English language? For me starting to read the Discworld books in English marked the point where I read/watched/listened to more and more original content and I'm pretty sure my English wouldn't be half as good as it is now if I hadn't done that. And it gave me a reason to read the books several times, each time discovering some new jokes I missed before.

 

[matzesu]

I have to admit: I allready red the books in German (as normal Paperbacks), some years ago, so i dotnt think it will be that divicult, and i think i will not buy all of the books first, i now have Guard Guards on the Kindle, when this works out for me, fine, , if not, not wherry big loss.. 7 or 9 €..

I have also some other English Books on the Kindle, but these i got from Projekt Guttenberg, like Moby Dick, or Dracula, ditnt start to read these yet, as i have still enought of German Books to Read first, but i think these are much more divicult then the Pratschett Books..

 

[Akko]

Moby Dick, or Dracula

Yeah those are (most likely, haven't read them myself) rather old English which can be much more difficult to get into